9th June 2024:
As a result of the Paris Agreement the UK government has set a target of becoming net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The hype that goes with that target setting reflects the real motivation behind the goal - the UK Government is quick to announce that it is the most ambitious target of anywhere in the world and reflects the fact that the UK is a 'world leader' when it comes to the environment and setting sustainable policies (The song 'Don't Believe the Hype' by Public Enemy springs readily to mind here).
Yeh, right. The whole target seems to be mainly designed to show off the UK as a world leader rather than seriously trying to bring carbon emissions down. I mean, okay, the UK has brought its carbon emissions down by some 40% since 1990 levels, but that has mainly been brought about by the move away from using coal in power stations, and I'm not sure that was done for environmental reasons, and also by increased energy efficiency, which means that less energy is being used.
While these are all laudable achievements, they don't actually reflect any real desire to change, but only to adapt. The fundamental paradigm here is this: we will not be changing the way we live, we will just adapt.
For example, no attempt is made to restrict the growth of cars or car use. No attempt is made to restrict flying, or the use of fossil fuels, or even the drive for more fossil fuels. No attempt is made to change values and attitudes to the natural world, and no attempt is made to restore the natural world, or even stop outrageous practices like the use of peat in compost.
In short, we are not seeing any real commitment to stop climate change, but only a political class who are willing to see climate change become a reality and in the meantime to use it to enhance their own perceived prestige.
The other thing is that word ambition, where the government calls its targets ambitious. The thing about ambition is that it is jam packed full of hubris, rooted as it is in egoism and a bloated sense of self. Ambition is never rooted in reality. You can see this really clearly here in Wales, where the Welsh Government has set the 'ambitious' target of achieving net zero in the public sector by 2030, only 6 years away.
Talk about a target that has absolutely no basis in reality at all. Net zero by 2030? How on earth is that going to happen - is there even a credible plan that you can read? The answer is no, there isn't, there is no plan for how that is going to come about, because this is not a target rooted in reality, but one rooted in a political class that uses climate change as a vehicle to gain prestige and votes, in this case 'green votes'.
The Welsh public sector hasn't even done a credible carbon footprint of its activities, so it doesn't even have a baseline for measuring this target. Instead the official documents all talk about how the sector will 'decarbonise its supply chains', without any information about how that is going to come about within the context of a wider economy that has no intention of becoming net zero by 2030.
What's more, how is this even going to be measured - are the pubic sector bodies supposed to monitor the claims of its supply chain when they say they have credible carbon reduction plans and have implemented strong measures to reduce their footprint? The answer is no, of course they aren't, they don't even have time to do carbon footprints themselves and measure the footprint of their own activities, never mind ensure that the carbon reduction plans and claims of other organisations are at all accurate.
Rather than all of this silly target setting, which is aimed mainly at creating a visage of respectability for a political class that is utterly corrupt and ethically bankrupt, I would much rather see realistic plans being made that actually reflect the difficulties we face and that square up to those difficulties head on.
We need to create a culture in which high greenhouse gas producing activities are no longer deemed acceptable, and until we do that we are not going to deal with climate change, because a society that puts its own selfish interests ahead of life on earth is not a society that is going to create a better world, one where climate change does not exist. The only society that is going to do that is a society that restricts its own activities because it recognises that those activities are not only excessive, but also selfish, and harmful.
Now I'm not going to blame the government or the political, business or financial class for the wider faults of society. At the end of the day we have corrupt and cheap politicians because society itself is corrupt and cheap. In other words, the common baseline of ethics and integrity is so low in western societies that cheap and vacuous politicians, media, business people and financial parasites can get away with what they want, because they blend in with the rest of society and generally mirror their values.
For example, instead of going to a hustings and launching rotten fruit at the faces of the political class and telling them where to go, climate groups up and down the country are instead urging people, as usual, to kiss the asses of the politicians and to continue to validate them and the political system they represent by asking them to raise the issue of climate change higher up the agenda.
I mean, really - is that where the climate movement is at 20 years down the line, still kissing the asses of politicans and expecting something to happen?
We should be at war with the political class, and at war with the media, and at war with the business and financial classes. If we lived in a society composed of people that weren't as morally corrupted and spiritually bankrupt, then that is exactly what we would be seeing.
No amount of ambition for net zero is going to stop climate change. What we need is not ambition, but real hard graft done now, and for the next few decades. We need to go up against the very forces that are causing climate change, and directly confront them. And that is not just the fossil fuel companies and the business, financial and political elites. That is also your neighbour, your colleagues at work, the people you pass in the street: these are also the causes of climate change, as the parasitical classes simply reflect the underlying values of the broader base of society.
A society of people who have no intention of taking any real action on climate change or of changing their behaviour and values, is a society that openly embraces vacuous politicians that set meaningless targets that any decent person knows is just nonsense. Sadly, it's all too easy just to cast the blame at the wealthy or the elites, and pretend that the broader base of society that support those parasites carry no burden of responsibility. That is a lie, however, as the constantly vacuous targets and claims made by politicians, and the terrible inaction and lack of responsibility by the rest of society in dealing with climate change, testify to.